Thursday, November 6, 2014

Filming Of Birdman (2014) — One of the Year's Most Stunning Movies

Benjamin Kanes dressed as Birdman (L) and Michael Keaton on the set of 'Birdman' on
June 1, 2013 in New York City. Michael Stewart/Getty Images

The Simple Trick that Made Birdman One of the Year's Most Stunning MoviesBirdman looks and feels like one long take. Here's how they pulled it off.Birdman is expected to come home big on Oscar night for many reasons. There's Michael Keaton's comeback-within-a-comeback performance, and Ed Norton's brilliant satirizing of the theater world, and director Alejandro Gonzalez's head-scratching use of the camera to make the entire film feel like one long tracking shot.

Revolutionary filming by Alejandro González Iñárritu — on the set of Birdman (2014)

The vast majority of audiences will never see a cut between frames for 90 minutes and counting. That's pretty fkin hard, and almost impossible to do without boring the hell out of everyone.

How did they pull it off? Digital colorist Steve Scott reveals the secret to Variety:

“The whole movie is one shot. Well how do you do that? We started talking and brought up the idea of dissolves between shots, and I talked to our editor and I said where are those moments when you would never notice a cut? Well, in the pan [As in, the quick horizontal movement of the camera]. So let’s go into the middle of the pan and cut there, so by the time we get settled, we’re in the midst of the shot.”

Read Esquire's stellar profile with Michael Keaton here, and watch a behind-the-scenes clip of the film below.